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Australia: seen in the press / 2022

All the articles are sorted by theme.

Violence, acts of protest, prison conditions, justice reforms: find out what is new about prisons and justice in this country. Prison Insider monitors the press on a regular basis.
Change the language setting to French or Spanish to read other articles.

Judicial system

  • 14/10/2022.
    Why is a UN torture committee visiting Australia
    From October 16 to 27, United Nations will pay a special visit to look at some of the hidden corners of Australian society. A UN torture prevention subcommittee will be making unannounced visits to various places of detention. These could include adult prisons, youth detention facilities, immigration detention centres, police cells, mental health institutions, and secure welfare facilities. It will be looking for opportunities to prevent abuse and improve conditions of detention The visit will place international pressure on Australia to finally move forward with its commitments under the UN anti-torture protocol, on which the country has been dragging its feet. It’s also a unique opportunity for Australians to see what’s happening behind closed doors and to demand better transparency, accountability, and treatment of vulnerable citizens.— The conversation

Prison population

  • 28/09/2022
    What kind of country are we that treats children in prison with such cruelty and brutality? This week the disability royal commission has heard harrowing evidence about the mistreatment of some of Australia’s most isolated and vulnerable individuals. In doing so, the royal commission has destroyed our happy national myth and exposed the horror, cruelty and brutality of a broken prison and detention system. The stories of cruelty and brutality are not aberrations in the system. They are the system.And this cruelty is deliberately targeted at the most vulnerable – a shocking 60% of those who died in prison in Western Australia between 2010 and 2020 had a disability, and half of them also identified as Aboriginal. Banksia Hill is a notorious youth detention centre in Perth, as bad as Don Dale (the Darwin youth detention centre whose appalling conditions triggered a royal commission in 2016). The conditions are so squalid as to be almost medieval. Staffing levels are dire. Self-harm and suicide attempts are commonplace. And remember, these are just children, almost all of whom are suffering from a neuro-psychological disability. — The Guardian

  • 14/09/2022
    LGBTQ+ individuals face heightened safety risks in prison
    Dee Farmer served time at a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, for credit card fraud. She was housed in a male facility even though she identified as a trans woman. Based on prison policy, she was placed with her gender assigned at birth. Within two weeks of her arrival, she says she was beaten and raped by her cellmate. “I stayed in prison for 17 years. And while there, you know, I suffered all the types of abuses,” she said. “When I was raped, the guard was sitting down in his office and there were maybe 200 inmates in the unit I was in, in Terre Haute. There’s only one guard, generally, to every housing unit. So, to believe that the officers can protect you is just a myth.” A lawsuit by Farmer against the prison system reached the Supreme Court. The justices ruled in her favor, saying that prison officials may be liable for harm if they know of safety risks and disregard them. That case was in 1994. — Newsy

  • 15/08/2022
    “It broke my mind’: formeryouth detainee sues after being held in solitary confinement When Daniel* was taken into custody for the first time at the age of 17, he had never experienced any mental health issues. He was on remand for more than a year as he waited to face trial, and by the time a jury found him not guilty he was “different in the head”. “It broke my head,” Daniel said of juvenile detention. “It broke my mind.” Daniel is suing the State of NSW for false imprisonment, arguing in the NSW Supreme Court that a period he spent in solitary confinement was unlawful. He is also suing for assault and battery, for being handcuffed, ankle cuffed and strip-searched.—The Sydney Morning Herald

Detention conditions

  • 03/06/2022
    Inhumane conditions in Tas prison: judge.
    A prisoner in Tasmania who set his mattress on fire had been locked in his cell for four days straight and was unable to access mental health help. Tasmania’s chief justice has described inhumane conditions in a jail unit where a prisoner was locked in his cell for four days straight and unable to access help for his mental health. Trent Mervyn Leonard, 24, was serving time at Risdon Prison for dangerous driving when he set his mattress on fire in October 2020, causing $10,000 in damage.— 7news

Health

  • 19/04/2022.
    Children form ‘suicide squad’ in WA’s juvenile prison
    There were 24 suicide attempts in Western Australia’s only youth prison last year, which an independent inspector linked to some of the not-for-purpose facility’s most at-risk children being kept in small cells in conditions similar to solitary confinement. A harrowing report investigating Banksia Hill Detention Centre’s intensive support unit, released by the Office of the Inspector of Custodial Services on Tuesday, concluded the human rights of three children were breached on several occasions when they did not get their minimum out-of-cell time as outlined under international agreements. “Meeting the complex needs of those young people, combined with staff shortages led to an increase in lockdowns, reduced access to some services and made it difficult to provide meaningful out-of-cell time across the centre. — Brisbane Times
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